Earlier quoted context omitted.
The title of this article is that nuclear power is the safest , relative to other sources of power currently capable of scaling to needs. That's a very important distinction, so I would ask you to please consider that.
Safer than wind and solar? I don't think so. Those stats that we saw a while ago that people die from solar too because they fall off the roof are pretty ridiculous. 10 years from now all new homes will come with solar panels pre-installed, so people won't have to set them up themselves. Plus, you could always hire someone else to do it for you. In my country we're building giant wind turbines that will generate twic…
Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity
161–170 of 262 posts
Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
The title of this article is that nuclear power is the safest , relative to other sources of power currently capable of scaling to needs. That's a very important distinction, so I would ask you to please consider that.
Safer than wind and solar? I don't think so. Those stats that we saw a while ago that people die from solar too because they fall off the roof are pretty ridiculous. 10 years from now all new homes will come with solar panels pre-installed, so people won't have to set them up themselves. Plus, you could always hire someone else to do it for you. In my country we're building giant wind turbines that will generate twic…
Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
You've drank milk and eaten meat contaminated by poisonous chemicals from coal power plants for your whole life. Not a single person has died yet from the Fukushima disaster, yet millions of people have died from ailments caused by coal power plants. Why is that kind of contamination just fine? I find it incredibly offensive to see the Americans on this board downplaying the damage from Fukushima. Perhaps we should f…
why to promote that false dichotomy - either nuclear or coal. There are other options, better nuclear designs, natural gas, wind [ which is baseline type of energy if towers are high enough ], solar - we have so much desert on Earth, and start seriously develop nuclear fusion [ as its development has been practically stopped for the fear of proliferation ]
Wait ... what? Are you saying that nuclear fusion (and not fission) poses some kind of proliferation risk? Proliferation of what, exactly? Advanced lasers? Powerful magnets? Hydrogen? Deuterium?? Tritium??? Helium????
Or are there some reasons to worry that the neutron flux from the reaction would be used to activate or otherwise enrich something dangerous that I don't know about?
Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a quick bit of thought. Lets say that you need to mine, say 2,715,384x the amount of coal to produce the same amount of energy as you would uranium. (From https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Energy_densit... ). Now if mining uranium is less then 2,000,000x more dangerous as mining coal, then per unit of energy generated it is actually safer. Hence yes, I do think that coal mining is more dangerous then…
Wrong. How much percent of Uranium is in ore? How fast is that going down in the next century? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining_debate Ever wondered why Europe has coal mines but closed all uranium mines? Just for fun? Uranium mines now happen to be in remote areas or developing countries. Uranium mines are a cluster fuck of all kinds of environmental problems. Germany closed one. It cost billions to conta…
To begin: * Uranite (U3O8) is a major ore of uranium https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Uraninite and is in fact mostly uranium by weight. * "Uranium mining is the largest business in Niger and the life expectations is not much about 50 years there." Is an example of 'correlation does not imply causation'. To give you an example, the number of pirates have gone down over the last few hundred years. Global temperatures have gone up over the last few hundred years. From that information alone you cannot say that the lack of pirates causes global warming.
* I'd also mention here that there are large amounts of diamonds sourced from africa. A trade that is very profitable, yet leaves the people themselves with very little money nor increased standard of living.
* From the wikipedia article you specified: "Because uranium ore emits radon gas, uranium mining can be more dangerous than other underground mining, unless adequate ventilation systems are installed.". Assuming these safeguards are met, I fail to see how it would be 2,000,000 times as dangerous as coal mining.
I will, however, correct my previous statement. -Natural uranium has an energy density of 443,000MJ/kg -Coal has an energy density of 32.5MJ/kg.
Hence to produce the same amount of energy as you can produce using one KG of natural uranium you require 13630kg of coal.
Assuming the risk of coal mining is measured in a certain number of fatalities per kilogram mined (equivalent to a certain m^3 mined, given a constant density of the mined material) is R_C and R_U for coal and uranium respectively then the expected number of fatalities per "1kg of uranium equivalent energy" is then R_U and 13630R_C.
As such for coal to be "safer" 13630R_C needs to be < R_U, a statement I consider unlikely.
Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
"20 km or so of this country is probably going to be left unlivable" [citation requested] I haven't seen any hint of that. Is that from actual scientific reports based on sensible standards of "unlivable" (i.e., based in sensible risk analysis), or is it just based on unscientific worries? And did you have a hard time finding "uncontaminated" meat because there was actually a shortage of meat that was scientifically…
I remember Erik Naggum calling out this "citation requested" calls as being passive aggressive, On HN I see them mostly coming along when the view of the other is not accepted. The radiation levels and the finding of Pu in the ground, leaking out radioactive water and the like have already been reported to death. This call for sources, at the same time demanding they be sensible and have to use sensible definitions i…
I, personally, have provided citations for every single person who requested one of me as far as I know, not to mention answering quite a few requests made to others. Feel free to trawl my comment history looking for examples. If you can find one that I haven't seen, I'll go dig up a citation to support it.
It's hard to trust someone's opinion if they can't explain the facts upon which they base it. Of course I'm still wrong sometimes, but the exercise helps me to prove to myself whether or not I know what the hell I'm talking about. I often find new information and refine my opinions accordingly. That's how I learn.
Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is that reason, exactly? When Banqauio kills 171,000, Bhopal kills 10,000, and 30,000 people die every year from coal pollution, why exactly don't we give energy production methods like that the kind of scrutiny we're giving Fukushima?
Because Bhopal had nothing to do with energy production? And are you claiming Bhopal didn't get massive media coverage? Because it did.
Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
So now the point is that coal disasters aren't being talked about? I thought we were discussing whether nuclear power is safe. Are you actually going to stand up and on the record proclaim that in general, free of context, nuclear energy is safe. Just that one sentence: nuclear energy is safe. No it isn't. It's fucking dangerous. Air pollution killing lots of people doesn't change this. Radiation kills people too.
Bringing up coal when people start bitching about nuclear is no different from bringing up car accidents when people start bitching about flying. Danger is relative, and relative to the rest of the power industry, nuclear is absurdly safe .
There must be some creative statistics at works behind those safety figures.
Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity
#168Yes right ... the safest. Especially, for our children and their children. For everybody who's a proponent of nuclear: If it is so save, why can't you get one insurance company to insure a plant against accidents? And what do we do with the waste? How do we deal it? How do we make it clear for coming civilizations that they are not supposed to dig there etc. as the the waste will stay hazardous for 100,000 years?
Please watch: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_Eternity_(documentary)
Is there any other way to make electricity that puts that high of a burden on coming generations? Maybe I'm totally off, yet can effects from coal/water/wind/sun power plants kill people 100 years after they been shut down?
Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
At scale, right now, those are the only two options.
Well, for that matter, we don't have enough nuclear power production capacity to meet our needs either, so I don't entirely see your point. Reducing the amount of power we're producing with fossil fuels will mean needing to increase our production from other sources, but it doesn't mandate that we have to increase it from a particular source.
Re: Nuclear Power is Safest Way to Make Electricity
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
Strangely enough it takes very little money, nor energy to produce nuclear power. It's very simple at its core. Have a look at the first research reactors and you'll find that you need basically no technology to produce reactors that produce useful amounts of energy. On the other hand solar power, especially photovoltaics is stupidly complex. Photovoltaics requires semiconductor processes, arguably one of the most co…
Yet it takes Uranium and there's less and less easily available Uranium. It's a dead-end.
Fusion would probably be the best, because a large fraction of the universe's mass is hydrogen. Antimatter would also be cool, but it's also incredibly dangerous and we're far from being able to create significant amounts of it.
In the long run, we probably can't afford to drop any power sources. But in the long run, we're all dead.